Captain’s day off = fun fishing combined with some R&D!

Jason Bell is a Conch. He is the son of Captain Larry Bell of Blue Magic Charters in Marathon. He is a part-time deck hand with SeaSquared Charters. Most importantly, Jason is an excellent angler and I love fishing with him!

Jason had the day off from school for Veteran’s Day, so he and I went fishing. My goal was to do some trolling to test lures from a new sponsor. We gave it our best shot, but it just wasn’t happening, so we opted for catching dinner intead. I called Christy and asked for her preference, and she said – without hesitation – hogfish! I had caught some nice size hogs with my charter earlier in he week, so she knew they were out there.

I hit the patch reefs off Marathon and whipped out the shrimp bait. We caught a ton of keeper size fish – yellowtail, mangrove and mutton snapper, red, black and gag grouper and huge porgies. I kept some snapper to send to Christy’s brother in Long Island, and we threw the rest back in favor of the hogfish. In the end, we caught 5 hogfish and kept the 2 largest fish at about 17 inches. I also kept 3 Spanish mackerel for the smoker.

We’re cooking the fish Friday night, and I’ll post the recipe and some pictures of our hogfish feast!